The World Runs on Female Logic
"Yep!" "Yes, understood."
Han Seo-rin and Tae-gi answered with energetic spirit.
Suk Ho-pil leaned back in the office's comfortable armchair and lit a cigarette.
[These Korean bitches really do have flower gardens for brains. Stupid cunts who only focus on immediate gains and fleeting emotions, pulling reckless shit like animals. Yeah, that tracks.]
Ho-pil held a somewhat misogynistic worldview. There were exceptions, of course. But they were just that—exceptions. Nine out of ten Korean women were cunning, jealous, and dumb. Come to think of it, pastors and politicians were the ones who exploited those exact traits in female groups the most. Pastoral work and politics both demanded blind, devoted followers willing to labor for free. And the ones who fell for the delusion of loving and revering an alpha male enough to work without pay? Mostly women.
"On the flip side, they use beta males without mercy. They'll brutally destroy any guy who actually likes them."
Weak males became prey for these women, just like in those African wildlife documentaries. In extreme cases, they'd team up with a lover to murder their insured husband, or divorce their husband to run off with a well-hung boyfriend while cleaning out his assets. Men liked to brag that they wouldn't fall for women's tricks, but they always crumbled the moment a girl played the innocent or "I'm not a fox" card. It wasn't some stereotypical scam. Just like how most con artists had trustworthy faces, when a woman wanted to deceive a man, she could play the angel better than anyone.
"And then they throw a fucking tantrum about being victims of sex crimes and come looking for a lawyer."
Knock knock.
"Who is it?"
"It's me, Park Tae-gi."
"Come in."
"Jeup-serin... I mean, Ms. Do Je-ni has arrived."
"She's already here? Escort her to the conference room."
"Yes, I've already done that. I'll bring some tea."
"Yeah, I'll take an iced black coffee."
"Roger that."
After brushing his teeth, Suk Ho-pil headed to the conference room. Han Seo-rin was just leaving the office to go meet the professor at the detention center.
"I'll be back."
"Don't forget to remind the professor about the success fee."
"Don't worry. I'll gaslight him properly."
"Yeah, good."
Come to think of it, Han Seo-rin was a textbook example of a Korean bitch too. She only did what she wanted and dumped all the unpleasant tasks—like cleaning the live-in office—onto the men. [Still, she does her job as a lawyer well. Lawyers aren't corporate drones anyway.]
He took a deep breath as he approached the conference room, then opened the door.
"Hellooo~"
"Nice to meet you. This is my first time seeing Jeup-serin in person. I'm Lawyer Suk Ho-pil."
A stunning beauty had walked into Suk Ho-pil's Law Firm, which was tucked away on the second floor above a shabby Seocho-dong bean sprout soup restaurant.
[So this is what a top BJ looks like. She's practically idol-level, like those Karina types.]
Long, silky black hair, a small cat-like face, sharp Northern European-style eyes, a sleek nose bridge, thin lips, and a delicate jawline. Her body was visibly slender and voluptuous even at a glance. The crop top that showed off her navel and the wide-leg pants did nothing to hide her perfect figure.
"This place was really hard to find."
"I'm overwhelmingly grateful that you went through the trouble."
From what he'd heard, she'd been introduced to him by someone he'd helped during that celebrity investment fraud case back at Jung & Han. She'd retained him over the phone before even meeting him in person. She looked surprised that he'd already drafted the complaint. Then she read it and was shocked a second time.
"Oh my god... You wrote exactly what I wanted to say, but way more precisely than I could have."
"I stayed up all night going over the evidence you sent and distilled only the key points. Even so, the complaint came out to ten pages. It's practically a short story. The chairman who assaulted Jeup-serin will be charged one hundred percent with quasi-rape causing injury, stalking, threats and coercion, and cyber defamation under the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Data Protection, etc."
"You're incredible. Hahaha, can we submit the complaint exactly like this?"
"Tae-gi can take it down to the prosecutor's office."
"Really?"
"Yes. There's also a success fee once we get a guilty verdict. Technically you're not supposed to charge success fees on criminal cases, but I'd like to ask for one anyway."
"I can't do it for free, obviously."
"Huh?"
"Go on a date with me in Itaewon. I want to grab some beer and pork belly, but I don't have a guy to go with."
It was a straight-up flirt. Suk Ho-pil knew what was happening but couldn't avoid getting hit by it. She was saying she'd only pay the success fee if he went on a date with her.
"When should we go?"
"Right now."
"Alright, let's head out."
"Whoa, are you sure that's okay?"
It was only the second day since he'd opened his practice, but the two cases he'd already taken on were going ridiculously smoothly. The look in Jeup-serin's eyes was anything but ordinary.
[What's with her? Is it because I'm a lawyer who graduated second in my class from the Judicial Research and Training Institute? Did I already pass the preliminaries?]
With six hundred thousand Instagram followers, she was easily a major-league BJ. She'd said she wasn't quite at that level, but then what the hell would a true major-league BJ even look like?
"I don't have any guys I meet regularly. No friends either. I'm a total homebody."
She said it as Ho-pil helped her into the car and drove past the courthouse hill.
"Why wouldn't you? You've got one right next to you."
"Kyaa! Farmer Oppa, can I call you Oppa?"
"Sure, sure."
After passing Jam-su Bridge and parking at the foot of Namsan, Ho-pil took a moment to steady his breathing.
[If I'm going to eat and run, I need an exit strategy.]
Because of that busty lawyer Han Seo-rin at the office constantly giving him blue balls, he needed some way to relieve the pressure. Of course, Jeup-serin—Do Je-ni—was a client, and there was no denying she had incredible presence. But she was absolutely not the kind of woman he'd ever consider marrying. She'd been a veteran since childhood, bombarded with confessions and daily flirting rushes. Plus, the rape incident with the chairman had some suspicious parts. She was beautiful, but she gave off the vibe of a shady woman from the underground scene.
"Even so, mountains are meant to be conquered."
"Sorry? What do you mean?"
"Namsan is pretty steep, right? There's a café in that alley over there."
The beer-and-pork-belly spot in Gyeongridan still had a while before it opened, so they decided to kill time at a café decorated with bamboo in the garden.
"I've been here before."
"With who? I thought you were a friendless homebody."
She was at a loss for words.
[Still pretty innocent, huh.]
Maybe she really had been genuinely raped. Either way, the fact that she was still lively and energetic after something like that meant she wasn't an ordinary woman. Worried that the honey-mute act might have hurt her feelings, he added,
"You don't have to answer. You have the right to remain silent."
"Puhahaha, that's funny, Farmer Ho-pil-nim."
He could feel her favor toward him. Suk Ho-pil started to wonder if maybe he really was handsome after all. His brain had been confident he wouldn't fall for a Korean bitch's tricks, but reality wasn't that simple.
When they entered the café, everyone's eyes turned toward them. Once again, he realized her presence was no joke.
"I brought a transcript. Take a look."
You couldn't bring smartphones into the attorney meeting room at the detention center, so she'd printed it out on paper. Professor Yoo couldn't believe his eyes. The truth was, he'd been drunk when he took his grad student girlfriend to the motel, so he hadn't remembered the conversation. At the motel desk, she had insisted on taking him inside, while the professor—unusually for him—had kept refusing, saying he needed to go home. In other words, it was practically the grad student dragging a mentally incapacitated professor into the room and reverse-raping him. And then she'd submitted torn panties as evidence, claiming the man had done it to her. For all they knew, she might have torn the panties herself.
But none of that mattered. The audio recorded by the home cam at the motel desk was decisive proof that her statement lacked consistency.
"Thank you, God. Hallelujah."
Professor Yoo shed tears. They were incredibly hot tears.
"Professor, once you're out, please remember the success fee. We're one hundred percent getting a not-guilty verdict."
"Yes, yes, of course. Whew, Lawyer Suk Ho-pil really is as capable as the rumors say. I'll have to hire him for my divorce case later too."
"What? You're really going through with the divorce from your wife?"
"That's right. I expect that to be quite difficult as well. But first, I need to get out of this filthy, cramped prison."
"Yes, well... this isn't a prison, it's a detention center."
"Prison, detention center, same difference. No human being should have to live in a place like this."
The professor told Han Seo-rin that he'd been reflecting on how arrogant he'd been all this time. He admitted that his grad student must have harbored resentment because he hadn't approved her doctoral thesis, and stated that he would not countersue her for false accusation.
"As expected of a Christian. You're truly practicing Jesus's teaching to love your enemies."
"Indeed, indeed. When is the trial? I want to get out of here as soon as possible."
"There's a hearing date coming up soon. We've already submitted the transcript and other evidence through the electronic litigation system, so you should hear good news before long."
"I need to return to the university too. If it's a not-guilty verdict, they'll have to reinstate me, obviously."
"Um... after a scandal like this, is that even possible?"
"Scandal? I simply loved my student with all my heart. There were just some communication problems between us, that's all."
"You still love her? She filed a rape charge against you. Creating and submitting a criminal complaint is complicated and difficult. If she did it on purpose, it means her grudge runs deep."
"My student—the one who accused me of rape—has come to visit me several times."
"Excuse me?"
Han Seo-rin was genuinely shocked. As a rookie lawyer, she hadn't known. In lover-to-lover rape accusation cases, it was surprisingly common for the woman who filed the rape charge to visit the man in jail. The imprisoned men would be dumbfounded, asking why she'd even come. The women wanted the boyfriends they'd sent to prison to understand the feelings that had been hurt. Trying to understand the mental world of a Korean bitch was pointless. The only option was to be careful. Extremely careful.